1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates, generally, to the interaction of calendaring and scheduling applications over networks and more particularly to providing temporary and limited grants of personal and/or business calendar access to an event organizer to facilitate, for example, planning and organization of an event.
2. Description of the Background Art
Event planning is plagued by what is sometimes referred to as the “let's get together problem.” Planning and scheduling an event as simple as a friendly neighborhood barbecue can quickly become a scheduling dilemma in that certain neighbors that are to be invited to the barbecue may only be available on certain days whereas other neighbors may only be available on another day. The availability of the event planner (who may be a professional event planner or simply an individual charged with planning an event), too, is a factor to be considered with respect to when (and in some instances where) an event may be held. The additional factor of at what time particular people are available should a mutually agreeable date be determined adds yet another dimension to planning and scheduling difficulties.
Negotiating and converging on a date, time, and place for an event amongst amenable parties such as friends and family may consume a substantial amount of time for the event planner and invitees (e.g., persons invited to attend a particular event) before any other logistical aspect of the event is even addressed (e.g., shopping for food, barbecue utensils, and the like). Planning an event between two hostile parties (e.g., representatives involved in a contentious negotiation) may be further complicated by personal issues such as individual grandstanding or negotiating ‘tactics’ to achieve a perceived ‘upper hand.’ In either instance, it is not unusual for as much time to be spent planning and scheduling the event as it is actually attending the event.
In many instances, this wasted time is simply related to personal availability or the lack thereof. For example, the event planner (Planner X) may want to meet on Wednesday evening but two friends (Invitee Y and Invitee Z) may only be available on Tuesday and Thursday, respectively. In other instances, however, these expended planning ‘cycles’ are the result of differing and otherwise incompatible calendar systems. For example, one user (e.g., Planner X) may utilize one particular calendar application (e.g., Microsoft Outlook) whereas another user (e.g., Invitee Y) may utilize another calendar application (e.g., Lotus Notes Calendar and Scheduling). As a result, it may not be possible to gain access to the availability of invitees to an event.
Notwithstanding the incompatible calendar application problem, many users of a compatible calendar application (e.g., co-workers operating from the same enterprise calendar application) may be apprehensive about granting other users (trusted friends and family included) access to their calendar as they consider the data therein to be private. Further, personal or corporate privacy concerns may constitute a bar to gaining meaningful access to certain calendar and personal availability information. Additionally, granting access to a calendar may constitute an administrative issue as these grants typically do not expire. As such, an individual may be required to continually review who has access to their calendar and determine whether such grants of access should continue.
Yet another problem encountered with respect to event planning is who is actually required at an event. A friendly event such as a family reunion may represent a simple invitee determination—parents, children, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and so forth. More formal events—especially those in the workplace and that may be subject to the “chain of command” and workplace egos—become increasingly complicated and dicey. For example, while only a core group of three low level engineers may be required to work on a new software specification, a middle-manager for that engineering team may insist on attending all meetings while failing to contribute anything substantive at such meetings. Failure to invite that manager, however, may result in a bruised ego and could realistically have workplace consequences with regard to future work assignments. Further, a senior manager may have requested to be cc'd on all group e-mails and meeting schedules as a courtesy and to remain in the know while making it known he has no intention of attending engineering team meetings.
But when planning that aforementioned meeting between the three engineers (necessary invitees), the middle-manager (required but non-contributing invitee) and senior-manager (courtesy invitee who will not attend), presently available calendar applications do not utilize information concerning the priority or contributions of the invitees with respect to determining a suitable meeting time for the subsequent issuance of a meeting invitation. As such, a review of the availability of these five persons when only three are actually necessary to the meeting may result in a display of substantially less available meeting times than if only the calendars of the three necessary invitees were consulted.
A still further problem encountered with event planning is that it does not occur in real-time and may give rise to issues concerning stale calendar data. For example, various indications of event availability may be exchanged via electronic mail, voice mail, live conversations, disparate calendaring systems and so forth. By the time the event organizer collects the availability data for all invitees and gets around to scheduling the event, some of the availability data that was provided may no longer be valid (e.g., during the interim, a particular person scheduled another event). Keeping the event organizer up-to-date with invitee availability burdens the event organizer and various attendees with the need for intermittent verifications as to whether a previous indication of availability remains open at present.
There is a need in the art for invitees to provide temporary and limited calendar access to an event planner such that invitees expose only the portion of their calendar that is relevant to the event being planned. There is a further need of a means to provide information relevant to availability of necessary event attendees without surrendering personal privacy or business confidences. There is, too, a need to provide temporary and limited calendar access without regard to a particular calendaring application or related hardware platform. There is an additional need to provide such temporary and limited calendar access in real-time such that an event may be planned and confirmed without the immediate need for user intervention and confirmation.